Since prison inmates get free food, medical care, gym equipment, and now college grant money, is prison in America becoming a joke?

Ask this kid if it is great to be in prison:

The thing the OP fails to understand is that most of the people who are in prison will one day get out, rejoin society.  The more we prepare them for this, the less likely we are as a society to pay the cost of policing them, judging them, and imprisoning them when they commit yet another crime because they could not find employment when they got back on the street…and lets hope the crime is not violent and has an innocent victim involved…all those things cost society a lot more than paying for healthcare and food…

As a citizen, you can pay on the front-end or you can pay on the back-end, but you will still pay and it is usually cheaper to prevent crime than police crime.  I do not know why that is so hard for some people to understand.

Then again, maybe the OP thinks being in prison with no health care, no food, beating beaten, raped (like the boy above) is a great way to “teach someone a lesson and make them a better citizen”…yes I want that kind of person walking the streets….meanwhile the OP has to pay to live “in a better neighborhood” far from his work, pay higher insurance, have a home security system, a car alarm, the OP feels a little scared if the women in his family want to jog the street at night even in their suburban enclave, maybe even feel he needs a gun for home protection, but yeah the OP is not “paying”…  The OP should realize that people in many nation in Asia and Europe cannot even comprehend living in such fear or having to pay such excessive costs for “safety”, but they also treat their prisoners like human beings.

Source